Poverty, prostitutes and the long, slow death of the Soviet Union: Haunting pictures show desperate struggle to survive in last days of USSR
These shocking pictures may look like something out of the Great Depression – but in fact they show life in the last years of the Soviet Union, less than three decades ago.
Shop shelves were often bare, it was normal to have to join a long queue if you wanted to buy groceries and many of the people looked ground down after a century of desperate poverty.
The dismal state of the USSR’s economy, during a time of rapidly improving living standards in the West, was a result of its dogmatic Communist political system, which stifled free enterprise and stopped the country moving on from its feudal past.
As these images show, by the 1980s that system was close to collapse, as Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberalising reforms did little more than open the door to ever louder clamours for change – and on Boxing Day 1991, just a few years after these photos were taken, the Soviet Union was finally dissolved.
Hard times: Eighteen-year-old prostitute Katya scours the street for work as a police car drives past in Moscow in 1991 shortly before the collapse of the USSR
Bleak: Siberians line up outside a shop in Novokuznetsk, Russia, in a sign of the economic decline that had beset the country in the final years of communist rule
Hindered by centralised market forces: A long queue forms in Novokuznetsk for bacon and other meat from the butcher at a state-run market
Glum: Two dirty children look out the window in a coal-mining and steel-manufacturing community in Siberia enduring widespread economic hardships
Struggling: Siberian women sit outside houses in the coal-mining and steel-manufacturing community of Novokuznetsk
Bleak: Russians must wait in food lines to get whatever goods are available in November 1991, just a month before the collapse of the USSR
A real age of austerity: Shoppers line up at the check out stand of a store in Moscow in 1991 as the USSR neared collapse
Looks more like the 1970s: Women patients sit at a table with food and fold their laundry in a rundown hospital ward in Moscow in July 1991
Taking a breather: Hospital nurse Ludmilla Subocheva smokes on her break in the dining room
Unrest: Soldiers and tanks moved to Red Square to surround the Kremlin at the beginning of the coup. But by the end, much of the military decided to back Gorbachev
Grim: A line forms for bread in Moscow (left), while woman mourns the three victims of the attempted coup at various impromptu memorials around the city in 1991
Sombre: Three female Moscow department store workers watch a mass funeral from the store window following the failed coup attempt
Small comfort: Women stand next to several vodka bottles which they are exchanging for small change at a recycling point
Taking their minds off things: Siberian men relax outside a shack in the town of Novokuznetsk, which was hit hard by widespread economic problems in the early 90s
No smiles: Female miners take a break from their work in the town of Novokuznetsk, Russia, in June 1991
Getting the bare essentials: Shoppers and vendors in a food market in Kaluga in November 1991
Signs of desperation: People stand in line with cans for food supplies in Tula, Russia, in November 1991
Hoping for anything: Russians must wait in food lines to get whatever goods are available in Moscow
Putting on a brave face: A woman stands near the back of a queue for a market in the Russian capital
Dark times: A coal miner who lives in an industrial community in Siberia enduring widespread economic hardships in June 1991
Getting by: A woman plays her accordion along Arbat Street in Moscow, a popular pedestrian thoroughfare, as several men stand nearby watching her
A young girl plays her violin for a crowd with her dog lounging in the violin case (left) and an accordionist (right) performs on Arbat Street in Moscow
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